Weekly Update - 149 (Patreon)

Well, we're already one week into the new year and things are looking pretty okay!

Comic this week? Yes! We'll be returning to our regularly scheduled pages beginning this week.

Drawing: Pages 163-164

Playing: WoW

Reading: Need to finish Brandon Sanderson's The Final Empire now, we started it over the holidays and I need to know how it ends!

Ramble:

I don't like New Years Resolutions. I never have.

Setting a goal for the new year just because it's the new year doesn't seem like a great way to set a goal that will stick. In my experience, most New Years Resolutions last about 2 months, maybe 3, but it takes, AT LEAST, a full six months in order to make something into a habit. Drawing comics for me every Wednesday by this point is a habit. I know it's a habit because it feels bad when I am NOT doing that.

That said, I've made a New Years Resolution! Or rather, I've set a professional goal for myself that I intend to adhere to in order to achieve better results in my work-life balance because I've noticed a significant decline in motivation, focus and general professional drive and it just so happens that the idea for this goal and the timing of its implementation corresponds with the turn of the new year! To label it a "New Year's Resolution" just makes it seem more likely that I won't stick to it.

But the reality is that 2022 wasn't a great year for us. I lost a lot of whatever it was that's kept me going through the first four years of God Slayers, and I was really struggling to find it again. I basically stopped drawing sketches on Fridays, I took a lot of extra time off, (posting only 35 pages last year, falling short of my goal of 40) I just feel kind of worn down, in general. It's not because I don't still like drawing comics or presenting this story, but it's like I've lost touch with my muse.

I feel stuck, honestly, trapped in Chapter 9, as I continue to slog through the story I wrote four years ago. I've complained about it before, but what I consider to be such an important part of the story is really difficult for me to get through. I've been waiting to get to this part for years, I wrote it, and I've been spending time and thought each month refining and attempting to perfect it FOR YEARS. But all that lends me to believe that it is, at present, the BEST I can probably do, as far as the writing is concerned, and now I'm scared to change it. A lack of flexibility in this part of the story means I don't have a lot of fun drawing it. I didn't allow myself any room to wiggle around and explore different ways of saying things like I normally do. In the meantime, a lot of my creativity has been trying to escape, to turn to future chapters and other projects and find new places where it can create.

So what am I doing to fix this? Well, I was out at lunch with my husband this past weekend, and he weighed in with some advice. I try not to brag too much about my husband, but he's great and he's smart and he knows a lot of stuff. His advice was something that I already sorta knew was true, and something I had already sorta been thinking about, but in a fuzzy, nebulous way that's difficult to actually implement. Once he'd stated it aloud, it all made a lot of sense, suddenly. He suggested I try adhering to a more organized schedule. It's the biggest thing, he says, that's kept him focused and motivated. It doesn't have to be a strict schedule, just a more organized one. To pick various times throughout the day where you focus on one task, and make that consistent day after day until it becomes a habit.

So that's my "resolution" for this year, to try and stick with a more organized schedule. I want to dedicate some time each day to writing and worldbuilding, keeping my mind fresh with reading and watching literary discussions and other education material, and of course, the bulk of my day will be dedicated to drawing. My recreation time, (video games,) will be curbed and packaged towards the end of the day. There's even time allocated on Mondays for writing this Ramble!

So I'm actually excited about this and encouraged by treating this comic as more of a profession. And I'm excited for finishing Chapter 9 (there's like 3 pages left,) excited for publishing our first book this year, and I'm excited for clearing out my queue of Patron rewards and jumping back into Riley's minicomic! I'm excited for future Chapters of Kiva's story as well...

There's more characters you all have yet to meet, and some of them have some very strong opinions about gods...